extraordinary circumstances
by Bluecookie300
Summary: It wasn't that Bruce hadn't known something was … off … about Dick, he had just never been able to prove it. This wasn't a conversation Batman would go into blind, so it wasn't a conversation that had never been had. But Dick still woke gasping for breath from the nightmarish events no one else remembered. It took a silly plot of an unnamed 2bit supervillain to sort this one out.
1. Round Up

It wasn't necessarily that Bruce hadn't known about Dick's … _extraordinary eccentricities_ … it was simply that he had never been able to prove that they existed. It wasn't the kind of conversation Batman would ever go into blind, and it was therefore a conversation that had never been had.

All the same, when the supervillain of the week's world ending plan was to begin with a magic spell that crippled all meta's (at least _temporarily_), Bruce was the only one to even consider a sideways glance at Nightwing.

The majority of the justice league, including all of the founding members, as well as the young justice team, were all present in the watchtowers meeting room. Those not present were only so because they were off world, with everyone having been called in due to the direct threat to every individuals safety.

The team had managed on their latest mission to gather intel that for once, put the hero's ahead of the game. For the first time in a long time, they were ahead of the game and could put into place safety precautions before the fight had even begun. They didn't actually have a lot of time, but it was enough to have everyone called in. A full frontal assault wasn't actually necessary, but because it was a reality that most of the league and its associates were in actual mortal danger, having everyone in one place was a matter of comfort for those leading the charge.

Mortal danger was of course part of the job, you kind of signed up for it. But where it could be prevented the justice league was a bit over the top in doing so.

Nightwing, while no longer on the team, let alone leading it, still had some pretty significant connections to the league as a whole. He had withdrawn over the years after the invasion, retreating into Bludhaven. He was barely keeping in touch with even just the Batclan. He had once been known as one of the most sociably hero's in the community, only to become more like his mentor than he had ever intended. Wasn't that irony.

All the same, Bruce had yet to even give him the eye, let alone pull him aside. Nightwing was however good enough at reading the minutia of Batman that the concern was obvious. Bruce had been an okay father figure, and Batman had helped him become one of the best 'non-meta' vigilante's on earth. But neither the suit or the cowl had ever been very good at understanding platonic or parental feelings (Dick couldn't comment on the _romantic_ aspect himself, but he knew of some people that would probably agree).

Batman was going to be an emotionally constipated asshole about this whole thing, Nightwing could read it in the set of his shoulders as he began to outline the plan.

The problem was, Batman could get away with very little explanation for his actions. The reality was that he usually did what was right, what saved the most lives. When they were younger, Wally might have described this phenomena as Batman getting away with it "Because he's **_Batman_**!"

In all honesty though, Nightwing hadn't slept in the last three days, and he looked like it. So even if Batman would have let him be on the team that was actually going to fight, rather than stay safe for those fighting's peace of mind, he probably wouldn't have been up to it.

So Nightwing sat back to watch the show as the young justice team exploded in rage that they wouldn't be getting to act on the intel they had gathered.


	2. Left Behind

For all the righteous anger of the itty bitty young justice team, it was Jason and Roy that put up the loudest fight about being left at the watchtower like inept housewives. Wally and Tim came closer to success when they tried to fiddle their way out of the tower by promising they just wanted to go home.

Ultimately however, Batman got his way, _because he's __**Batman**_.

It was actually mostly founding members that Batman had assembled, which was their first true team up in a while. Whether he had organised this out of actual strategy or because of some other, more _protective_, instincts, was extremely debatable.

The Zeta-beam announcements got annoyingly repetitive after a while as the founders filed out. Those left behind had spread out across the watchtowers common area, pervading irritation fading into the silence of space.

It was expected to be a relatively boring couple of hours, mostly filled with sleep, rest and more sleep. Vigilantes could never get enough sleep.

Nightwing himself had claimed the only plush couch to be found in the whole floating base. Unlike the minimalistic and 'modern' style of the rest of the watchtower's furniture, this couch was comfortable enough to doze in, as well as still being central enough for optimal involvement when needed.

Within half an hour, Nightwing was well past the realm of dozing and into the territory of the cat nap. The Batclan had settled within a messy cluster around him, Wally hanging around the edges and Roy not much farther away. Cassie, Megan and Connor, as well as the rest of young justice were spread further beyond.

Bart was moving incredibly slowly for a speedster as he and Jaime wondered back to the main area from the kitchen. Their muttered conversation was cut off by the sound of the Zeta Beam.

Shoulder tension rose across the room, everyone immediately on alert. It had only been half an hour. There had been no zeta designation, only the quiet '_whoosh' _of the beam.

Nightwing seemed to have stayed in the land of cat nap, but in actuality was considering the consequences of lost meta-powers for those still present. The justice leaguers left behind had retreated to their own rooms, the older justice league associates and adjacent's had gravitated to the cafeteria. Those gathered around him were in actuality the younger generation, even if many of them were well into adulthood.

Most of young justice would be out of commission if this 2 bit villain could really cripple the meta's.

Crap.

There was little any of them could have truly done as the wiry man stepped out of the shadows throwing down an opaque blue ball. It burst, and suddenly they were all chocking on sickly sweet vapour. There hadn't been time to even cover their mouths, let alone reach for rebreathers.

Wally screamed.

Bart joined him in abrasive harmony.

It was a symphony of screams as sweet slick coated their throats and fire burned up their spines.

Dick was in too much pain to notice the shock on his _brothers_ faces as they watched him collapse alongside their superpowered allies.


	3. Uh-oh

The next few seconds were incredibly eventful. Dick was aware of none of it.

All Dick could comprehend was the fire in his very cells, as if every strand of DNA within him was trying to rip itself apart at the seams.

He wasn't aware of Mr_. lets chuck a blue ball of death gas at superheros _exiting as quickly as he came. Wasn't aware of the quiet _whoosh_ of the Zeta that should have been lost in the cacophony of sound.

He wasn't aware enough to watch Roy snap out of the shock. The shock at seeing most of the people he knew collapse in agony.

He wasn't aware when Roy had turned abruptly, lurching towards Mr. _what's his face_ just in time to see him leave, a roar of anger following him as he zapped away.

Dick wasn't aware of the population of the room doubling as the older hero's came stampeding in from the cafeteria, ready for war only to find the collapsed being approached by those whose shock was now receding.

Dick had passed out by the time the founders came storming out of the Zeta-tubes ready for battle to find a room full of inaction.

Dick was only aware of the inky black of unconsciousness.

Within minutes of the Founders arrival, the room was once again ordered. The meta's who had been affected had been moved into more comfortable positions. The leaguers who would only have been in the way were dismissed. Those who had been present but unaffected were drafted into explaining every minute detail to a deadpan Batman.

Batman was not happy. Some random, a relative nobody, had not only tricked the Justice League with some semi-bullshit intel, they had also managed to break into the most highly guarded base on the planet. Not to mention that Mr. Nobody had managed to take out two thirds of the younger generation.

Thankfully, it seemed that the younger meta's were recovering quickly. From what he had gathered from Wally's shaky description, it had been excruciating for the first couple of minutes, and then died off abruptly leaving behind shaky weakened muscles. Whether the effects would differ between individuals had yet to be determined, but samples from the shattered glass ball had already been sent to the lab for testing.

Relatively, the attack had done little damage, the only thing he really left to be worried about was the fact that Nightwing was passed out in the corner of the room. Others were beginning to notice, the expression on his frozen face was just a bit too telling for this to be explained away as a coincidence.

Superman was already approaching him, the lecture he was about to give about trusting allies and needing to be aware of their abilities was already written in the set of his face.

Bruce turned away, walking calmly over to his eldest.

All it took was hovering his hand over Dicks shoulder for the boy to startle awake. He had been trained maybe too well, and Batman might regret the deep set exhaustion written in the wrinkles under Dick's eyes.

Batman could see how Nightwing's eyes flickered across the room before looking slightly up at him. There was no vulnerability in his wide blue eyes, only what looked like resignation.

They both knew what was coming.


	4. The Horror on their Faces

Roy and Wally had already pushed Batman out of the way, having come over to check over Dick. Jason and Tim weren't far behind, and Damian was hovering over their shoulders, hesitant but present all the same. Dick had been the only one to pass out it seemed, which would have been worrying by itself if it hadn't been for the fact that as far as anyone was concerned, he shouldn't have even been affected.

The muttered "_Typical_" from Conner Kent's corner of the room broke the silence that had dominated for the last 60 seconds and the onslaught of questions begun. Are you okay? What the fuck? Why? Why? WHY? Why were you affected? Why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you _trust _us?

It was Batman who finally called "SILENCE"

"It seems Nightwing, that you have been keeping something to yourself, for a very long time if my suspicions are correct."

There was more collective shock at that statemen than there had been as a whole within the last hour. Whispers again erupted. How had Batman not known? Did Nightwing seriously have some kind of metahuman power? What do you think it could be? How fucking long had this been a thing and why hadn't anyone noticed? How had the Batclan not known something so important about one of its own?

This time it only took a glare from Batman for silence to once again reign. He turned to Nightwing expectantly.

"What exactly do you want from me?"

"I want you to explain why you were clearly affected by the toxin that only affects metahumans, despite never having shown any metahuman abilities."

"That's easy enough, I reacted to the toxin that affects metahumans, because I _am_ a metahuman." It was maybe an avoidance of the implicit question, but Dick was going to make Batman work for this if it was going to be revealed to basically the whole goddamn Justice League.

"Okay seriously Dick, What the Fuck" was the outburst from Jason that had been building up since the beginning of this whole stupid confrontation.

"Yeah, since when were you a metahuman?" Wally tacked on.

"What exactly is your power Dick?" Tim got straight to the point asking the question that everyone was dancing around. This was going to be like pulling and intensely ingrown toenail, unpleasant and painful but necessary.

"It's not exactly simple to explain …"

"that doesn't mean we don't all deserve an explanation dick! This is kind of a big thing to keep secret. Hell, most of us have known you since we were kids and you've never told anyone. I mean, you never even told Starfire, and you almost fucking married her!"

Starfire was a weird argument to bring up in all this, she wasn't even here, but Roy did actually have a point. Dick had actually planned on telling her one day, but then the whole thing with Mirage had happened and he had never gotten the chance.

Noise in the room was beginning to rise yet again.

"I ..."

It was as silent as a pin drop by the time Dick had gotten to his second word.

"...You know what Roy, I actually came pretty close to telling her. But its not all that relevant most of the time, considering it only activates when I die."

If before he had said anything you could have heard a pin drop, then now the silence was such that a feather touching the ground would have been akin to a thunderclap.

It was as if everyone was holding their breaths as Wally reached out to Dick, to offer comfort or support or the like.

Dick flinched away.

"Since it's clear that none of you are going to leave this alone, then fine you can have all the gory details. Every time I die, I wake up again. Life's a bitch and then you die. Except you don't. You wake up again in the morning and relive it all over again, and again, and again. It's the fucking time loop of nightmares that all the time travellers warn you about. But it's not even the reliving everything that's the worst part. Its being able to literally change the past, to go back and fix what shouldn't come undone. It's the guilt every time something goes wrong, and you don't get to fix it. It's being off world when your brother dies and not finding out he's dead until it's already to late to go back and change it. Because you only ever go back a day, 24 hours, no more, no less."

He was puffing in breaths, the anger of his outburst already fading back into calmness.

"I never brought it up because it was never relevant. It's not like I even really worked it out for myself until I was like 13."

It was here that Dick stopped to take in the horror of those around him. Roy looked like he had been slapped and the devastation on Jason's face made him to guilty to even look at him. Tim and Damian, and Barbara and Steph, all shared the same distinct look of ruin. But it was Wally whose face was written with realisation.

"Dick … how many times have you died exactly?" it was a hesitant question, but one that was desperate for answers.

"I don't know an exact number, but I know you don't want a rough estimate."

"Dick …" it was a plead for answers, but also a desperate hope that they hadn't all truly failed the first little Robin as much as it was beginning to appear they had.

Dick sighed, "It's probably somewhere in the couple hundreds. The first time my parents fell, I fell with them. The second too. I can still feel the wind in my hair sometimes. The snap of my spine."

Dick turned and addressed Batman as he went on "Those nightmares I had? The ones from when I first came to the manner. Those weren't nightmares, only memories. It was actually one of my more peaceful deaths."

There was nothing scary or distant about Dicks demeanour as he continued to elaborate turning back to face his dismayed audience.

" There were a couple repeated days during those early years, days I just dismissed as scarily accurate nightmares. Times when little things went wrong out on the streets. A perp getting in a lucky shot or a concussion that went unnoticed. I think I eventually worked out what exactly was going on when I woke up to relive the same day for a third time in a row when I was like 10 and a half. I kept getting captured by the Joker."

Batman had remained deadpan, but the tensing in his shoulders told Dick that he remembered that specific day. It had been a drug bust gone wrong in which Dick had ended up being captured by Joker and tortured for a couple of hours. It went unsaid exactly how Dick had died in that situation, but everyone knew.

" The first time I tried to actively _use_ my… _power_… was not long after I joined the teen titans. Slade had captured me and was trying to blackmail me with my new teams lives. He had injected them with nanobots that would kill them with a click of a button if I didn't do everything he said. I relived that day 7 times before I gave up. I was simply to late to stop them being injected with the damn bots. There was nothing I could do. There was nothing I could do."

It was a lengthy explanation, but Tim had noticed the difference between an estimate of a couple hundred and a list of tops 20-30 incidents. No one was going to say anything about the implications, the suicidal implications that accompanied the whole thing. They were hero's, they sacrificed everything to save others all the time, even if this seemed to be going way too far.

Wally's horror was only mounting.

"Dick …" he didn't know how to ask the question, "…exactly how many times did you relive the Invasion?"

There was a distinct snap in the sudden lack of movement, as those who had been disengaging suddenly froze. The implications were awful.

"I lost count after the 270th day, but there was probably at least another month after that. There was no winning Wally, I could save you or the world. I could save the whole team, the whole world, stop the invasion before it even started, but there was no reality in which both you and earth survived. There was nothing I could do. I could relive the same day over and over and over. Take the same little black pill over and over and over. But I couldn't save you. Couldn't save my best friend. Couldn't save the best friend who would never have been in danger if he had never known me."

The why of Dick suddenly quitting vigilantism after Wally's death had never been undefined, but it was suddenly thrown into sickening clarity.

Batman finally spoke up "Dick, that pill is meant to be a last resort, even if you survived it will slowly destroy you from the inside out as time moves on."

The implications of that pill had never sat well with the Justice League, but they had never been able to argue Batman out of having it in the Robins' standard kits.

Dick snorted, "Don't you get it Bruce, in this timeline I never took it. I carry around the same damn pill, have swallowed the same damn pill so many times. I've swallowed and swallowed and swallowed the pill still sits in its seal in my pocket."

It was Roy that moved abruptly after that, hauling Dick to his feet and half carrying, half walking him to the Zeta Tube. Dick was done for the day, and with all that was left to say, most of the Justice League didn't really want to handle any more.

One day that story would have to be finished.

Today wasn't that day.


End file.
